Insyde hacking - New Vaio Z - Advanced menu in BIOS

Whoops, wrong thread.

 

step 7
flash modified BIOS:with "flash1t new.rom /f"
but it told the /f switch is invaild
I used /all instead of,is this correct?

 

Other questions:
How to get VSS_SIZE value?
I find "24 56 53 53" twice in dumped rom file:
00390048h and 003a9b5bh.Is VSS_SIZE = 003a9b5bh - 00390048h =019b13h (VSS_SIZE = 0x019b13)?

And how to know PATCH_OFFSET value for a non sony notebook?
thx.

 

To get the VSS size, you will need d6z's tools from:

http://thechaw.com/insydecodr

But you will need to edit main.py and start from there.

Also, I found out that there is no fingerprint module in the new Z firmware

This is why New Z does not support power-on fingerprint scan.

I find this highly ridiculous, as even Old Z and even TZ before had this feature. What is wrong with Sony?

 

Hey, psyq321, I'm really enjoying your experiment. Thanks again.

If possible to enter advance bios, can we set temperature of "low fan speed"?

Can we make it variable?

What about fan speed? is it possible to set fan's RPM or just "Low" & "High" ?

 

my guess is it probably wont be too hard to port it

 

Fingerprint check module is probably exactly the same in Old Z EFI.

With EzH2O that could be "transplanted" (but, this is not going to be easy as you'd need to have right versions of EzH2O for old and new EFI, and all versions I tried with Old Z EFI ended with crashing)

However, bigger problem is the driver itself. EFI has a basic driver model, and that fingerprint sensor must have a low-level EFI driver in order for EFI to "see" it and use it during POST. If Sony changed fingerprint hardware, and I believe they did, old driver will not work.

Of course, the best way (next to Sony just doing the damn thing) would be to have the source of that InsydeH2O EFI - which I don't believe it will happen

 

Or we just get coreboot running, which will solve all our problems

 

Unfortunately no

There are ACPI thermal settings, including the threshold points for fan activity - but those seem to be either ignored or they cannot stop the fan.

 

TRIM is only for SSDs. There is no need for HDDs to have TRIM support...

I enjoyed reading this thread, and am going to experiment myself with my S series VAIO. Its also running the Insyde H2O bios, and I would love to unlock advanced options, especially the overclocking/under/overvolting sections. However it may be quite different from the Z's bios...

 

If it has InsydeH2O they are all mostly the same.

The only difference in Sony's implementation might be the VSS offset for the visibility flag for advanced menu, which was 0x25A for the old Z and 0x258 for the new Z

You can also find the location of this flag by decompressing the setup utility binary BLOB and then running one of d6z's tools (you might have to patch it with OPCODE 0x27 support - I can upload mine)

With setup dump, you will be able to see which byte is controlling the visibility

 

argh I hate dos, give me linux ...
Whenever I type "cd C:" it goes back to the A ...

it shows : C:\
and then A:\ again ...

 

To get to c drive in dos you just type "c:"

 

The difference in DOS is that if you type cd C:\Mydir and cd D:\Foo then if later on you type C: you will find that drive C is in the directory MyDir. If you type D: that drive D is in directory Foo

 

I still hate it

But ehh in the "manual" it says the command "python etc etc" but python is not recognized as a command.

 

ofc I mean that the HDD will get replaced with a singel SSD

Will TRIM work then? Anyone tested?

 

I tried it and I got an error: can not open this fd or something like that.

 

Python is not included in windows so you have to install it. You can find it at:
http://www.python.org/download/

 

Done that, and then I switched to command prompt and the APP folder on the usb key. Then I typed python advanced_menu.py dump.rom new.rom
Rebooted to usb key and then fla new.rom /f but then I got the "error" fd can not open.

 

When flashing new ROM just skip option/switch altogether (i.e. no /f at the end). That's what I did.

 

Still can not open fd

 

Try also naming file new.fd instead of new.rom, although I doubt that would help. Another advice would be to copy original rom to hard drive, run advanced menu script there and then copying new rom to flash drive.

 

I assume the memory speed is unlinked due to the CPU turbo features, so I don't see why it wouldn't work. Also, mine came with sticks rated for 1333MHz.

 

I don't get it why it doesn't work Can not open fd file >.>

 

How can I be the only one with this problem? I've got the HDD version(thus european). >.>

 

How is your flash drive partitioned? Could it be that you are launching command from the wrong "drive" so it does not see the ROM file?

 

I have to type python in the App folder otherwise it won't recognize the python command.

edit: does it matter which file system the usb stick is? I don't think it does but does it?
I do see the red ribbon on the screen and its initializing but then says: this FD cannot open.

 

From the command line window snapshot the "new.rom" file is created/output to your user directory on hard drive. Did you copy it to flash?

 

Yep in the 2nd snapshop you can see the new.rom

 

Did you try with putting the new.rom in the same folder as flash1t? E.g. root folder?

 

Wow cool it really works the manual is incorrect

By the way my HDD is configured in RAID :S, changing it to IDE or AHCI leads to BSOD.

edit:

next stop, finally getting ubuntu to work.

THX a lot

 

I tried this too but it didn't work the first time. Looked at it again, and changed the Flash drive from Fat32 to NTFS, and it works now. When i copied the original rom to the hard drive (ntfs), run the advanced menu script and copied back to Flash (fat32) it would give me the unable to open error.

 

Interesting. My flash drive is formatted FAT32 and worked flawlessly. But I remember that in the past some FAT32 formatted flash cards would not read correctly on a different system until reformatted there (and then may not read on original or another camera/player/computer).

 

Will Flashing The Bios Work On Sony Vaio VGN-FW560F.
Will It Enable The AHCI?

 

Hi. This is a great thread. I successfully used the info here to flash my Z112 some time ago and enabled the advanced menu.

Now...I would like to boot from an express card SSD. I see references to PCMCIA boot and more boot options, etc. in the txt file from page 1 but I do NOT see any of those options in my BIOS screens. Any ideas on what I could change?

 

As great as this advanced menu hack is, I wonder if anyone has found a way to get bios to unfreeze the SSD Drives which would allow for secure erase. At the moment the only way to do that is to hotplus the SSDs which is sort of dangerous.

 

perhaps psyq could provide a method to edit some of the other values since ezh2o isn't working?

I'd specifically like to enable the advanced boot menu...there are references to pcmcia card and others and I'd really like to be able to boot to my expresscard ssd. There are some other things I'd like to play with too.

Normally I like to dig in with trial/error...but obviously that's risky business on our bios

Thanks in advance.

 

i have seen this all post's, and im realy excited with the possibility with mod my Insyde bios too, but my notebook is a HP Dv7 2160ep, W\ a q9000, and ati mobility hd4650, the overclock options would be nice, can anyone help-me made something like that in vaio?

 

Has anybody seen POST behavior like I detail in this thread?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/484384-sony-vpc-z11-slow-post.html

I don't think changing the BIOS caused the problem, but couldn't hurt to ask.

 

I'm very impressed with your work, psyq321. I want to use the script on the old Z because the EFI boot doesn't work anymore in later BIOS. What do I need to find out in order to get things work?
Are they VSS_OFFSET, VSS_SIZE, PATCH_OFFSET (0x25a I guess)?

VSS_OFFSET can be found by looking for $VSS (0x3b0048 in my case). But how about VSS_SIZE?

 

You will need to use some of the python scripts from thechaw.com/Insydecodr/branches/master

But you might need to modify them for the old Z.

 

Well done folks. I've been looking to do this since I acquired my new Z the first week out in the US. I immediately put in faster memory, and could not change the memory speed. The processes for Windows are quite clear, and worked perfectly. So I say thank you.

Now, if I could find the TPM, I would be happy.

 

Hi, I'm patching a VPCS1(since these are much similar to Z models). The patch worked fine after changing VSS_OFFSET to 0x200000 lesser than the original value ( which resulted 0x151048) but when I flashed it, no advanced menu showed up. So is it possible that the offset is different? Is there any way to find out the offset? Are the settings around VAR.magic+0x258 non critical so I can test each byte?
I used R0282Q3.ROM from http://customersupport-download.sony.com.cn/VAIO/EP0000223751.exe which is 2MB in size.

 

It is not just VSS offset - it could be that the "advanced menu toggle ON/OFF" variable is not at the VSS offset 0x258 (or 0x25a, like it was on the old Z). Usually those settings at 0x25x are not critical - so you can try "poking" - at your own risk, of course

But, if you want to do it analytically, you need to dump the setup executable from the BIOS/EFI and find what is the offset the setup application checks before showing the advanced menu.

For that, you need to utilize the python tools from the link above - but, as I stated, you might need to modify them a bit for your notebook model, so some python and EFI knowledge is needed.

Basically the procedure is the following:

- Extract the setup executable binary from the entire ROM dump (Insyde uses LZMA compression, and you will need appropriate LZMA libs for the python scripts to work)

- As all EFIs use (almost) the same syntax for the menu control, you can dump that with dumpsetup.py (potentially you need to modify it a bit)

- Analyze the textual output of the setup menu script, and you'll easily find what is the offset the setup application checks to show advanced menu

- Use this offset and flag and patch it

 

can someone give me some help please?? i'm doing this for an s11 model; i've already extracted the .rom file, but when i try to read it with ezh2o v2.1.0.13 and i select "other -> setup menu" from the menu bar, it crashes!! i don't know what to do... i wanted to obtain the screen i see on the 2nd post, the one by psyq.

EDIT1: btw, icould easily extract the .rom by launching the setup, going into "Users -> username -> AppData -> Local -> Temp" , searching for the most recent folder and copying the files inside. you can find Insydeflash and the .rom . i think that's an easier way to do the job...

EDIT2: sorry to everyone, i just saw the z11 doesn't have a downloadable executable to update the bios, so the only way i through the procedure of the first post. in my case there's an update on the sony support site.

 

Hi, great work. I'm trying to unlock the advanced menu on a Acer 1810T.

So far I've extracted the setup portion of the BIOS dump with the main.py but dumpsetup is not working it exits with:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "dumpsetup.py", line 272, in <module>
    strings = StringTable(pe, STRING_TABLE)
  File "dumpsetup.py", line 41, in __init__
    offsets = struct.unpack("<%dI"%count, self.data[16:16+count*4])
struct.error: unpack requires a string argument of length 336091144

I suppose I have to change the STRING_TABLE = 0x10b30 value, but how do I get the right value?

 

Process was quite simple and smooth for me, took <10 mins (I did the python stuff on another machine, and just did the read/write rom in one pass). It's very nice to see the advanced controls in the BIOS!

I wonder if there is a way to adjust the default screen brightness for while on AC and while on battery?

 

^ you can do that right in windows power management

 

Yes, I am aware, but I was wondering if it is possible to keep the brightness level outside of Windows.. like at computer startup, DOS, or in BIOS...

 

^On Z, no. How much time are you spending in dos and bios?